These
illustrations are part of 96 courtroom drawings that the Library of Congress has acquired as part
of the Thomas V. Girardi collection, named after the prominent Los Angeles
lawyer best known for leading a personal injury lawsuit made famous by the film
about the consumer activist Erin Brockovich.

Bernard Madoff going to prison by Elizabeth Williams

The three
illustrators featured in the collection — Aggie Kenny, Bill Robles and
Elizabeth Williams — have chronicled famous trials over the last half-century,
including the Wall Street trials of the “junk-bond king” Michael R. Milken, the
entrepreneur Martha Stewart and Ivan F. Boesky, convicted of masterminding what
was then the biggest insider-trading scandal in the 1980s. The newly acquired
collection also includes politically sensitive trials, including those of the
Iran-contra defendants; the French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn; the World
Trade Center bomber, Mohammed A. Salameh; and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, son-in-law
of Osama Bin Ladin.

Courtroom cameras make witnesses leery: One thing is constant with witnesses in felony trials — they fear possible retribution, according to Bill Dickenson, Kankakee County first assistant state's attorney.

Psst. Want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge? No? Then how about a painting by Mark Rothko? So few come to market. You haven't seen this before because it previously belonged to a Swiss collector who bought it directly from the artist. Now his son wants to sell it but wishes to remain anonymous.

Minus the Brooklyn Bridge, that was roughly the dialogue that roped in some hugely wealthy art collectors who plunked down millions of dollars at the prestigious Knoedler Gallery to buy paintings by Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still and Barnett Newman - all of them fakes.

In a trial that started on Jan. 25, 2016 and ended on Feb. 10, Domenico and Eleanore de Sole, two of the defrauded collectors, sued the Knoedler Gallery, its former director, Ann Freedman, and the gallery's holding company, 8-31 Holdings, for $25 million. In 2004, they had bought a bogus Rothko for $8.3 million and wanted their money back, plus damages.

The trial took place in Manhattan's United States District Court, 40 Centre St., in front of Judge Paul G. Gardephe and a 10-person jury.

In the absence of cameras, courtroom artists Elizabeth Williams and Victor Juhasz recorded the proceedings. Their drawings are now on exhibit and for sale at the World Trade Gallery, 120 Broadway, through Feb. 27.

"This was the largest art fraud trial of all time," said Williams. "It rocked the art world."

Knoedler took in roughly $70 million for fraudulent sales that started in 1994, Williams explained. A woman named Glafira Rosales appeared at Knoedler with a cache of Abstract Expressionist paintings that she sold to the gallery for a fraction of what they would normally cost. The first batch were a couple of Diebenkorns.

In February 1994, gallery director Freedman asked John Elderfield, chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, and Diebenkorn's widow and daughter to look at the paintings. All of them expressed doubts to Freedman about their authenticity.

But that didn't stop Freedman from selling the Diebenkorns and the other paintings that Rosales brought to her. She assembled lists of people who had supposedly authenticated the paintings. During the trial, many of them testified that they had never authenticated anything or consented to have their names used.

"The crux of the trial was whether or not Ann Freedman knew the art was fake," said Williams.

Judge Gardephe believes that she knew. An article in The New York Times (Jan. 24, 2016) quoted him as saying that there was "ample circumstantial evidence demonstrating that Freedman acted with fraudulent intent and understood that the Rosales paintings were not authentic."

In fact, the paintings were created by Pei Shen Qian, a Chinese immigrant living in Flushing, Queens. Williams said that he was working as a street artist in SoHo when Rosales met him.

Qian was indicted on charges of conspiracy, fraud and making false statements and has fled to China. He has said that he didn't know that his work was being sold as authentic. He was paid a few hundred dollars to as much as $9,000 for work that Knoedler subsequently sold for millions.

Freedman has been sued but not indicted. Rosales pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion and money

Ann Freedman, former director of the Knoedler Gallery.

laundering charges in 2013 but has yet to be sentenced. Her former boyfriend and co-conspirator, José Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, and his brother Jésus Angel Bergantinos Diaz, have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering and are awaiting extradition from Spain.

The party came to an end in 2011. During a divorce settlement, Pierre La Grange, a London hedge fund executive, needed to sell the Jackson Pollock painting that he had bought from Knoedler. He took it to Christie's and Sotheby's to have it appraised and learned that it was fake. It used pigments that weren't commercially available until 14 years after Pollock's death.

Knoedler, founded in 1846, was the oldest art gallery in New York City. When La Grange sued Knoedler in November 2011, it shut down the next day.

That's what tipped off Domenico and Eleanore de Sole that their Rothko might also be a fake.

To date, the scandal has led to 10 lawsuits. Five were settled out of court. The de Soles' suit was the first to go to trial. The four others that are pending are not likely to be heard for at least a year.

When the de Soles had their Rothko painting displayed in their South Carolina home, they had it encased in expensive glass and protected by an alarm system. On Jan. 27, when the "Rothko" appeared in the courtroom, it was handled "much in the way that one might deal with an empty pizza box," according to an account in Art News (Feb. 1, 2016).

Domenico de Sole said that the painting was "worthless."

The de Soles' lawsuit was settled right before Michael Armand Hammer, grandson of industrialist Armand Hammer, founder of the Knoedler Gallery, was supposed to take the witness stand.

The de Soles said they were happy with the settlement.

Liz Williams said that she enjoyed being back in Courtroom 318 at the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, which is where the trial was held. "It's one of three ceremonial courtrooms in that courthouse," she explained. "They have marble walls and wood. That's where the big trials take place."

She recalled having been in that courtroom in 1986 when she sketched Donald Trump, who was testifying on behalf of the U.S. Football League against the National Football League.

Her drawing of Trump on the witness stand is among the works now for sale at the World Trade Gallery. The drawings range in price from $1,200 to $3,800. All of them are authentic.

- Terese Loeb Kreuzer

The World Trade Gallery is at 120 Broadway (entrance on Cedar Street). It is open daily. For more information, click here.

Lawyers and the press with the "Rothko" painting after the de Soles' trial was settled.

VimpelCom to pay $795 mln to resolve U.S., Dutch bribery probes

By Nate Raymond and Anthony Deutsch

VimpelCom Ltd, an Amsterdam-based telecommunications operator, said on Thursday it would pay $795 million to resolve U.S. and Dutch probes into a bribery scheme in Uzbekistan, in the second largest global anti-corruption settlement in history.

The settlement was announced in a federal court in Manhattan, where a subsidiary pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate a U.S. anti-corruption law by paying $114 million in bribes from 2006 to 2012 to a Uzbekistan official.

The official, described in court papers as high-ranking and a relative of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, matched the description of his daughter, Gulnara Karimova, who has long been identified as being at the center of the probe.

Mark Rochon attorney for VimpelCom and its Uzbek subsidiary Unitel LLCcame
to court for the first guilty pleas of what prosecutors call a
"coordinated global resolution." Seated next to Mr Rochon, Vimpel.com
General Counsel Scott Dresser who pleaded guilty on behalf of the
company.

VimpelCom's settlement, which called for the retention of a compliance monitor, resolved probes by the Justice Department, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Prosecution Service of the Netherlands.

It marked a near record for a global anti-corruption accord, behind only Siemens AG's $1.3 billion settlement in 2008 that resolved wide-ranging bribery probes in the United States and Germany.

In accepting the resolution, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos remarked that the scale of the FCPA conspiracy was literally "off the charts" in terms of the federal sentencing guidelines.

VimpelCom, whose biggest shareholders are Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman's LetterOne and Norway's Telenor, took a $900 million provision in November to resolve the investigations.

Under the deal, VimpleCom entered into a deferred prosecution agreement in which U.S. criminal charges will be dropped in three years if it follows the agreement's terms.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Antonin Scalia, Justice on the Supreme Court, Dies at 79

Justice Antonin Scalia, whose transformative
legal theories, vivid writing and outsize personality made him a leader of a
conservative intellectual renaissance in his three decades on the Supreme
Court, was found dead on Saturday at a resort in West Texas. He was 79.

“He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and
treasured by his colleagues,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in a
statement confirming Justice Scalia’s death. “His passing is a great loss to
the Court and the country he so loyally served.”

The cause of death was not immediately released. A
spokeswoman for the United States Marshals Service, which sent personnel to the
scene, said there was nothing to indicate the death was the result of anything
other than natural causes.

Justice Scalia began his service on the court as an outsider
known for caustic dissents that alienated even potential allies. But his
theories, initially viewed as idiosyncratic, gradually took hold, and not only
on the right and not only in the courts.

Justice Scalia last month during the Bank Markazi argument. Counsel of Record Jeffrey Lamken at the podium

Justice Scalia far right, in the 1980's soon after he was elevated to the Supreme Court

Article about the deep and rather unique friendship between Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Antonin Scalia

Ginsberg on Scalia: "I disagreed with most of what he said, but I loved the way he said it."

LINK

http://www.bustle.com/articles/141707-this-one-rbg-quote-perfectly-defines-scalias-legacyFor example, one of their most recent disagreements on the bench was on the topic of same-sex marriage. While Ginsburg voted in favor in last year's landmark Supreme Court decision to strike down gay marriage bansthroughout the country and has personally officiated multiple same-sex marriages,Scalia wrote a scathing dissent, which has taken on a certain infamy in its seething anger. Despite these different views, Scalia and Ginsburg had a deep mutual respect for each other. Unsurprisingly, Ginsburg was often questioned about how she could maintain this highly reverential friendship, and her simple response explains the camaraderie perfectly. At a George Washington University event in 2015 when both shared the stage, she said: "I disagreed with most of what he said, but I loved the way he said it."

Knoedler Gallery and Collectors Settle Case Over Fake Rothko

A lawsuit against Knoedler & Co., a once celebrated New
York art gallery that was accused of selling a fake Rothko painting to a pair
of collectors for $8.3 million, ended in a settlement on Wednesday, just as the
gallery’s former owner and its president were preparing to testify in Federal
District Court in Manhattan.

Although the terms of the agreement were not disclosed, it
resolved all claims by the collectors, Domenico and Eleanore De Sole, who had
requested $25 million in damages, saying the defunct gallery and its former
president, Ann Freedman, had participated in a “racketeering scheme” to sell
more than 30 forged works said to be by Abstract Expressionist masters like
Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning

Attorneys announced to the press the settlement in the courtroom.
The judge and the jury did not appear in court today.
The fake Rothko (stored behind the screen during the trial) was removed from the courtroom,
now that the case is over.

“I think our clients are extremely satisfied by this
settlement,” Gregory Clarick, a lawyer for the De Soles, said on Wednesday
morning, after emerging from a conference with other lawyers and the judge.
“And they are also satisfied to get the truth out and tell their story.”

Charles Schmerler, a lawyer for Knoedler, called the
settlement “fair, reasonable and good” and added: “We’re pleased to see that
the parties were able to do this on the heels of the settlement with Ms.
Freedman.”

Collectors said Ms. Freedman should have also questioned the
paintings because, among other reasons, Ms. Rosales was providing them at
bargain rates, selling the fake Rothko, for instance, for $950,000. Knoedler
sold the Rosales works for far more. An accounting expert appearing on behalf
of the De Soles testified that the gallery had sold the forgeries for a total
of about $70 million, yielding a net income of $32.7 million for Knoedler and
bringing Ms. Freedman more than $10 million in commissions, in addition to her
salary.

Forensic accountant Roger Siefert testifying

Expert, Roger Siefert, testified that removing the
income from those sales and omitting income from the eventual sale of
Knoedler’s Upper East Side townhouse meant the gallery would have suffered a
net loss between 1994, when the sales of the fakes began and 2011, when it
closed.

Lawyers for the defense suggested that if the gallery had
not been selling the fake Rosales paintings it would have sold other works and
made up any deficits.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Brian Boucher, Tuesday, February 9, 2016This morning, Aaron Crowell, one of the De Soles' lawyers, questioned Knoedler gallery accountant Ruth Blankschen at length; she revealed that Hammer had bought a $482,000 Rolls Royce and a $520,000 Mercedes during the years that, as a forensic accountant had earlier testified, the gallery was profitable only through the sale of fakes.

Hammer then sold the car, she testified, and the holding company paid the taxes on his income from the sale.

She also testified that Hammer had charged as much as $1.2 million on a company American Express card between 2001 and 2012. She testified that the expenses included a trip to Paris for his wife, Dru Ann Hammer.

Ruth Blankschen on stand questioned by Aaron Crowell, the De Soles in the foreground

Blankschen said that she had paid Rosales up to $9,000 in cash in an envelope for each of the paintings she brought to the gallery, which is significant because the IRS requires reporting of cash transactions over $10,000.

"I don't think I'd do it that way today," Blankschen said on the stand.

Michael Hammer seated at defense table prior to the judge excusing the jury.
Hammer did not take the witness stand.

Monday, February 8, 2016

https://news.artnet.com/market/national-gallery-of-art-fake-rothko-422453The morning was consumed almost entirely by presentation of videotaped deposition of art expert and paid Knoedler consultant E.A. Carmean Jr. Portions of Carmean's testimony, which focused heavily on the purported connection between David Herbert and the mysterious buyer known as Mister X, who originally bought all these works directly from the artists, were presented first by the plaintiffs and then by the defense, though major portions of what was presented overlapped.

EA Carmean video deposition on screen, De Soles in foreground

At one point Carmean was questioned as to whether he had "ever given any consideration to the possibility that the information was false."

Carmean responsed that he was "not sure," adding, "If a painting looks like the real McCoy so to speak, you ask 'How did this object come to get here?'"

EA Carmean on screen with fake Rothko stored behind the screen

Questioned about what he meant by the term "the real McCoy," Carmean employed several music-related analogies, telling the attorney if he was to play five records—of which four were an Elvis impersonator and one was Elvis himself—"you'd probably be able to pick out Elvis." He also employed the hypothetical scenario of encountering a relative at an airport, specifically his own mother-in-law, saying, "it's just that there is a familiarity to an overall presence."

Carmean did concede at one point that the inclusion of Herbert's name on the provenance of so many works "should have always been said with a question mark."

Laila Nasr of the National Gallery on the stand questioned by Emily Reisbaum

The afternoon session kicked off with testimony from Rothko expert and National Gallery of Art curator Laila Nasr, who has worked on both the Rothko paintings catalogue raisonné as well as on the Rothko works on paper catalogue raisonné , the latter of which is still in progress. Nasr corresponded with Freedman over one of the fake Rothkos and subsequently included it in a show.

She was first questioned by the De Soles' attorney Emily Reisbaum, who repeatedly introduced correspondence between Nasr and Freedman, asking whether the form of the letters or information contained therein was unusual. Amid several objections from the defense—some of which the judge sustained—Reisbaum persisted in asking questions about language contained in letters such as that noting a Rothko work "that made its first public debut at Knoedler and Company at last winter's art fair in New York."

Ann Freedman, long a leading New York gallerist, and a couple who accused her in a federal lawsuit of fraudulently selling them a fake Rothko painting for $8.3 million settled their lawsuit on Sunday.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but the agreement was confirmed by lawyers for Ms. Freedman and for the collectors, Domenico and Eleanore De Sole.

The De Soles, who filed their
case in 2012, had been seeking $25 million from Ms. Freedman and Knoedler &
Co., the gallery where she had served as president and which closed in 2011,
just ahead of several similar lawsuits from unsuspecting collectors who had
bought fakes.

The case against Ms. Freedman,
whose testimony had long been anticipated, is expected to be dismissed in
Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday, said Luke Nikas, a lawyer for
Ms. Freedman. But the case against Knoedler, now entering its third week, would
continue.

Forensic accountant Roger Siefert gave testimony on the profits Knoedler received from the sales of the Rosales Collection.

The settlement follows damaging testimony about how much Knoedler and Ms. Freedman earned from the sale of more than 30 fakes that were said to be by Abstract Expressionist masters but were actually painted by an all but unknown Chinese artist in the garage of his Queens home.

James Martin, a forensic conservator, explained to the jury how he tested the painting and found it to be a fake.

Ms. Freedman and the gallery have
said they, too, were fooled by the paintings, which were all provided by
Glafira Rosales, a Long Island art dealer, who has pleaded guilty to criminal
charges in connection with the case.

Among the mysteries of the case
has been how readily the art market embraced works that had no documented
provenance. At least two of the Rosales works ended up hanging in a major
museum before their inauthenticity was discovered.

Lawyers for the De Soles elicited
testimony from a series of art experts who said that they had never
authenticated the Rosales works that Ms. Freedman appeared to present them as
endorsing.

Art expert David Anfam questioned by Gregory Clarick.

One, David Anfam, volunteered to
send a “a not long, yet highly persuasive email” to a museum in Buffalo after
Ms. Freedman wrote to him about the possibility of that institution acquiring a
Barnett Newman painting that turned out to be among the fakes.

Still, Mr. Anfam and Christopher
Rothko, the artist’s son, testified that they had never given Ms. Freedman
permission to include their names on a list of “individuals with special
expertise on the work of Mark Rothko” who had viewed the painting that the De
Soles bought.

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Murray
Tinkelman, an award-winning artist who has won gold medals from
the Society of Illustrators, The New York Art Directors Club and the Society of
Publications Designers passed away January 30th. His funeral scheduled for February 2nd
at the Plaza Jewish Community Chapel.

His illustrations appeared in a
variety of publications such as Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and The
Washington Post. Tinkelman has been commissioned by The National Park Service
to do drawings and paintings of National Parks and Monuments and by The U.S. Air Force to be an artist-reporter on specific missions. He had a one-man exhibit of his baseball art at The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York in 1994 and The United States Sports Academy in Daphne, Alabama in 1995. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Delaware Art Museum, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

Tinkelman was a
guest curator for The Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and the
Society of Illustrators, Museum of American Illustration in New York City.

Tinkelman was
named the recipient of the 1999 Distinguished Educator in the Arts award from
the Society of Illustrators in New York. He received the 1995 Sports Artist of the Year
from The United States Sports Academy, the 1970 Artist of the Year award from
The Graphic Arts Guild in New York City, and the 2001 Syracuse University
Faculty Service Citation.

He was Professor
Emeritus from Syracuse University where he taught in the undergraduate program
and was the senior advisor in the Independent Study MA Program in Illustration
for over 25 years from 1979 - 2006.

David Anfam, for his part, showed indignation on the stand when describing what seemed to be Freedman's efforts to exploit his expertise without his permission.

A foremost expert on the artist, Anfam authored a catalogue raisonné of Rothko's paintings in 1998. Gallery documents showed that Anfam had endorsed the work as genuine; he testified that he had never even seen it in person.

As per a document discussed in court, the gallery allegedly told buyers that the Rothko sold to the De Sole's was to appear in a subsequent catalogue to be authored by Anfam, and that another work, which was sold to Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery for $325,000, was slated for inclusion in an Anfam catalogue of works on paper.

“It's outrageous," Anfam said, pointing out that no such catalogues were ever in the works

Ann Freedman seated in court at the defense table.

Anfam further pointed out that had he known the whole backstory of the works Freedman was offering, he would have doubted their authenticity. Had he known that Rosales was supposedly selling as many as thirty Abstract Expressionist paintings, he said, “it would have rung alarm bells."

Eleanore De Sole on the stand; completed her testimony today. She referred to an 8M appraisal of the fake Rothko that Ann Freedman had given her.